Well that’s 2019 over with. For me personally it was a good creative year. I wrote more than I have ever done before and completed both the long narratives of My Life in Darkness, and The Sky-Pirates of Durn. Currently My Life in Darkness is being edited and considered for publication. The Sky-Pirates of Durn will need a lot of editing especially in the first few chapters, but I don’t wish to start editing that until I’m finally finished with My Life in Darkness. I continually wrote and published these stories at the same time every week for 45 weeks (36 for My Life in Darkness, and the last nine chapters of The Sky-Pirates of Durn), and I’m really proud of that.
While it has been a good year for me creatively, there has also been some bad things as well. I’m still dealing with the mass shooting in my city that occurred not terribly far away from where I live in March. 51 people were shot dead in two mosques here. I never thought something of that scale could occur here. The victims and their families are often in my thoughts. I remember after the shooting I felt very scared and vulnerable, as many others here did, and I didn’t like leaving the house for several weeks afterwards. On the day the shooting happened, many police cars went speeding down the road I live on, and to this day whenever I see police cars going past really fast with sirens blazing I get very worried and anxious all over again.
2019 Statistics
As I have now had two full years on WordPress, this means I have two sets of data that I can compare with each other. Wahoo!
I started the year on 207 followers, and finished with 541 followers. I was hoping to get to 500 by the end of the year, so I’m very pleased I achieved that. Thanks to everyone who follows me.
2019 2018 +/-
Posts 270 138 +132 (95.66%)
Views 15,400 4,388 +11,012 (250.96%)
Likes 8,771 1,886 +6,885 (365.06%)
Comments 2,020 379 +1,641 (432.98%)
As you can see it’s been a good year of growth for my blog.
Top Ten Countries Viewing My Blog
2019 2018
United States 5,649 (36.68%) United States 1,749 (39.86%)
India 3,944 (25.61) India 722 (16.45%)
United Kingdom 1,666 (10.82%) United Kingdom 474 (10.80%)
Australia 703 (4.56%) New Zealand 388 (8.84%)
Canada 459 (2.98%) South Africa 97 (2.21%)
South Africa 328 (2.13%) Australia 91 (2.07%)
New Zealand 238 (1.55%) Canada 86 (1.96%)
Saudi Arabia 229 (1.49%) Philippines 79 (1.8%)
Netherlands 212 (1.38%) Netherlands 66 (1.50%)
Denmark 168 (1.09%) France 56 (1.28%)
Of note, the percentage of people reading my blog in India has increased almost by 9% from last year. The most concerning aspect from those figures comes from my home country of New Zealand. Though I had 11,000 more views, there were 150 less views from New Zealand than last year. In percentages it fell from 8.84% to 1.55%. I’m not sure why this has happened.
Top Posts
Flash Fiction
Fiction
Into the Woods
Meela and Caelynn Have A Serious Talk with the Author…
Articles
Darkest Day: The Christchurch Mosque Shootings
Dragons of Middle-earth (written in 2017, but still going strong)
Oumuamua: Thoughts About Our Visitor from Another Solar System
Poems
I Really Wish You Were Here, Instead of Me
I decided not to bother listing my serial fiction. it was just various parts of My Life In Darkness…
Further Plans For My Blog
Around mid-October there was a decline in the numbers viewing my posts. This decline continued and progressively got worse in November and December. At present my posts are generally now getting around half the number of views and likes they got before this decline. While I’m getting more followers, at the same time I’m getting less people viewing what I’m posting. I’m not sure what to do about this. The last couple of months have felt like I’m going backwards, which isn’t a great feeling.
I was going to do another ongoing series starting next week, but I have decided to put that on hold for now. At present my plans are just to continue with flash fiction pieces and the occasional longer story and article, and wait to see if this decline in numbers is going to continue to get worse, or begin to recover. If it continues to get worse, I may have to reconsider what I’m doing with this blog. I’ll guess I’ll wait and see…
Another thing that some of you might have already spotted, but I’ve begun adding pages to my blog. You can now easily access some of my poems and flash fiction pieces (not currently all of them, though I’ll continue to add more as time goes on), and shortly there will be more pages added, such as longer fiction and articles.
Thanks
Thanks to everyone who follows, views, likes and comments on my posts. I really appreciate it. I would especially like to thank the following for their constant advice and encouragement: Crispina Kemp, Charli Mills of Carrot Ranch, and H.R.R. Gorman. There are many others I would like to thank here too, but it could become a very long list if I started doing that. Needless to say I appreciate everyone who supports this blog in some way, especially those who take the time to read my work and comment on it. Thank you 🙂
Please support this blog 🙂
©2020 Joanne Fisher
joanne the geek 
First, thanks for the mention, much appreciated.
Then, take heart, figures can and do go down as well as up. The profile of followers change, though a core of regulars remain. People’s lives change, where once they had time to browse, to read, now that slot in their day has gone; while another now discovers your site… Think of it as waves on a beach. Now they advance, now they recede. And now they advance again.
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Comments on my blogs also slowed in November and December. November is NoNoWriMo so a lot of the bloggers take the month off to work on their latest WIP or book. December is Christmas and New Year and most people take a great at this time of year. I think you are doing really well. Happy New Year.
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Thanks. I have a fascination with statistics, so I quite enjoyed doing the comparisons.
I do believe it should get better again. I am keen to hear from other bloggers of their experiences, so thanks for letting me know.
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Happy New year. I wish you great happiness and great success in 2020 dear Joanne.
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Thank you. Happy New Year and I hope you have a great 2020.
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So sad for those victims..
Happy New and have fun blogging 😊
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Woohoo! Many successful things, and I’m glad you’ve gotten so much done. Hopefully the stuff about the shooting will continue to get better with time, though I can see how something like that would cause long-term anxiety. It’s very intense!
Also, thanks so much for mentioning me. It feels good that I was a friend and that I might have encouraged you and/or made you happy. 🙂
Sorry for not being around recently – I’m just now getting back to the point where I’m interested in doing things blog-wise (grandma died about a week ago), and I theoretically have so much catch-up to do that I might just have to skip a lot…
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I’m sorry to hear about your grandma. I hope you’re okay. I was devastated when mine died. Take care of yourself ❤
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Thank you. I’m doing better now, but boy does it still take up a lot of my thoughts.
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